The Broken Promises of Choice in New York City Schools

by Elizabeth A. Harris and Ford Fessenden, New York Times, May 5, 2017

The city’s high school admissions process wassupposed to give every student a real chance to attend a good school. But 14 years in, it has not delivered.

"The sorting of students to top schools — by race, by class, by opportunity — begins years earlier, and these children were planted at the back of the line.

"Under a system created during Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration, eighth graders can apply anywhere in the city, in theory unshackling themselves from failing, segregated neighborhood schools. Students select up to 12 schools and get matched to one by a special algorithm. This process was part of a package of Bloomberg-era reforms intended to improve education in the city and diminish entrenched inequities.

"There is no doubt that the changes yielded meaningful improvements. The high school graduation rate is up more than 20 points since 2005, as the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has built on Mr. Bloomberg’s gains. The graduation gap between white and black or Hispanic students, while still significant and troubling, has narrowed.

"But school choice has not delivered on a central promise: to give every student a real chance to attend a good school.

"Fourteen years into the system, black and Hispanic students are just as isolated in segregated high schools as they are in elementary schools — a situation that school choice was supposed to ease."